Recent events in British Politics - Revision

With the AS Unit 1 exam on the horizon, the time has come for a brief round-up of political issues that are or have been in the news and which may be useful / important to mention. Don't forget that high marks can be gained from using up-to-date examples whenever possible.

The recent 2013 local elections have given UKIP some local council seats and have made David Cameron's life harder. Full results are here, and analysis from the BBC's Nick Robinson is here.

Arguably UKIP's success has underlined the fact that the UK is now a 4-party system, rather than the two or three-party system of recently.

Good arguments to make when contemplating whether the UK should reform its democratic system or not.

Also - a good time to reflect that UKIP started life as a pressure group.

A recent example of a pressure group is Migration Watch which campaigns for greater control of immigration. At the end of April it reacted to news that up to 35000 Bulgarians may enter the UK when border restrictions are lifted at the end of this year. Migration Watch says the actual number may be double that. Their web-site has a press release, published yesterday, which says that 100,000 dependants of EU nationals entered the UK getting full access to UK benefits. The press release can be found here.

Immigration is a complex issue, but certainly contributed to the rise of UKIP's vote in the 2013 local council elections.

Another news story that caught my eye this morning was this news that a privately-run prison in London (Thameside Jail) has terrible conditions.  The campaign group the Howard League for Penal Reform (i.e. prison reform) responded to this news here on their web-site, and took the opportunity to criticise government policy, especially the recent call for prisoners to do more productive activities while in jail in return for privileges like television.

Press releases like this add to a story, help journalists to put the news into context and help to put pressure on a government to react. The question is how much impact these individual actions have. Probably not much by themselves, but they help the democratic process by increasing pluralism.

[Picture Credits - Nigel Farage (top), HMP Thamesside (bottom)]

Current issues in UK politics - for revision!

Monday 14th Jan sees the Unit 1 exam. With this in mind, I thought I would do a quick run-down of current GB politics examples  which can be used.

By no means is this supposed to be exhaustive!

1. Election reform - democracy was enhanced, or perhaps even undermined by the Police and Crime Commissioners' election back in November; results can be found on the previous link (Conservative and Labour dominated, but there were 12 wins for Independents). Further analysis here; the primary concern was the very low turnout (on average under 15% across the UK).

2. The PCC election used the Supplementary Vote system.

3. Good examples of current Pressure Groups:

• Outsiders "Hacked off" campaign for a regulated press in response to the Levinson Inquiry last year. It has an e-petition which currently stands at 147,000 names.

• In September the Hillsborough Justice Campaign successfully get the government to release documents about the Hillsborough Disaster of 1989.

• In early January, an organisation, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, release a report  into wasted food - it looks as though it supports calls by a variety of Pressure Groups (Feed the 5000 and Sustainable Restaurants Association) to change the way food is produced and traded.

4. Mandate / Manifesto: Unusually for a Government the Coalition has released an audit of its successes and failures over the course of its 2.5 years in office. BBC analysis can be found here. Useful when discussing political parties and the issue of legitimacy / mandate and manifesto. Don't forget that no-one actually voted for the Coalition agreement, which was hammered out between the parties after the election.

Good luck everyone!